Michael Piller in 2000, receiving the
Gene Roddenberrry Award from
actor Anne Lockhart. Star Trek.com photo.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
by William S. Kowinski
Legacy (Part One)
Michael Piller was an important creative force in TV and movie storytelling of 24th century Star Trek, and in many ways he was a conscience of Star Trek after Gene Roddenberry’s death. Judging from the testimonials from people who knew him that are appearing on TrekWeb and elsewhere, he also had GR’s dedication to story and his affinity for people. Michael Piller seemed to have been a great student and a great teacher and mentor.
Certainly his remarkable innovation of an open door policy for scripts added energy and years of creativity to The Next Generation.
But in reviewing the richness in his commentaries and interviews I’ve sampled today, I wonder how much more there is that we can learn from him, and others. In a commentary for Star Trek: Insurrection, he mentioned compiling all the script versions of that film, intending to publish them. To my knowledge, he never did.
It is unlikely that such a volume would be published commercially today. Paramount and Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books) have determined that non-fiction Star Trek isn’t profitable. (I’ll have more to say about that in a different connection soon.) With the ten “special edition” DVDs of Star Trek features complete, and the DVDs of all the 23rd and 24th century Star Trek television episodes issued, Paramount is unlikely to release any more filmed or taped material relating to them.
So perhaps it is time for a different kind of memorial to Michael Piller and the growing number of creative contributors to Star Trek who have passed away.
I would like to see some kind of public archive created of all the Star Trek material that hasn’t been released, and will never be released commercially. There must be many hours of interviews with Piller and others, perhaps filmed for various DVDs but not included. And for example, the commentaries that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy did for original series episodes when they premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel, some of which have never been seen or heard.
There must be volumes of scripts and other writings done by those associated creatively with Star Trek, that will never be commercially published. Not to mention drawings, models and so on, as well as deleted scenes, alternate takes on tape and film.
The Internet offers new possibilities for providing access to people around the world. Probably there is no money to be made in all this, but there should be a method of ensuring access to scholars and fans.
Star Trek made a number of institutions and people a lot of money, and it became important to people who have made fortunes in different fields. They might be willing and even eager to create a Star Trek endowment, and help fund a nonprofit Star Trek foundation;to talk about a Star Trek museum, a Star Trek library and on-line archives, either as an independent entity or affiliated with another institution, such as the Museum of Broadcasting.
Maybe it’s time to talk about Star Trek fellowships, for people with the skills, talent and interest to research and prepare appropriate packages of visual, audio and print material. And interviewers to capture more memories and contributions from remaining Star Trek creators.
Perhaps this is the discussion that should be happening as Star Trek approaches its 40th anniversary. For it’s clear that whatever Star Trek becomes in the future, its past is becoming a closed book.
This proposal I believe is in the spirit of Michael Piller. He is one of the Star Trek creators in whose memory this could be done. Star Trek has an important legacy, and it can be kept alive.
Legacy (Part One)
Michael Piller was an important creative force in TV and movie storytelling of 24th century Star Trek, and in many ways he was a conscience of Star Trek after Gene Roddenberry’s death. Judging from the testimonials from people who knew him that are appearing on TrekWeb and elsewhere, he also had GR’s dedication to story and his affinity for people. Michael Piller seemed to have been a great student and a great teacher and mentor.
Certainly his remarkable innovation of an open door policy for scripts added energy and years of creativity to The Next Generation.
But in reviewing the richness in his commentaries and interviews I’ve sampled today, I wonder how much more there is that we can learn from him, and others. In a commentary for Star Trek: Insurrection, he mentioned compiling all the script versions of that film, intending to publish them. To my knowledge, he never did.
It is unlikely that such a volume would be published commercially today. Paramount and Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books) have determined that non-fiction Star Trek isn’t profitable. (I’ll have more to say about that in a different connection soon.) With the ten “special edition” DVDs of Star Trek features complete, and the DVDs of all the 23rd and 24th century Star Trek television episodes issued, Paramount is unlikely to release any more filmed or taped material relating to them.
So perhaps it is time for a different kind of memorial to Michael Piller and the growing number of creative contributors to Star Trek who have passed away.
I would like to see some kind of public archive created of all the Star Trek material that hasn’t been released, and will never be released commercially. There must be many hours of interviews with Piller and others, perhaps filmed for various DVDs but not included. And for example, the commentaries that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy did for original series episodes when they premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel, some of which have never been seen or heard.
There must be volumes of scripts and other writings done by those associated creatively with Star Trek, that will never be commercially published. Not to mention drawings, models and so on, as well as deleted scenes, alternate takes on tape and film.
The Internet offers new possibilities for providing access to people around the world. Probably there is no money to be made in all this, but there should be a method of ensuring access to scholars and fans.
Star Trek made a number of institutions and people a lot of money, and it became important to people who have made fortunes in different fields. They might be willing and even eager to create a Star Trek endowment, and help fund a nonprofit Star Trek foundation;to talk about a Star Trek museum, a Star Trek library and on-line archives, either as an independent entity or affiliated with another institution, such as the Museum of Broadcasting.
Maybe it’s time to talk about Star Trek fellowships, for people with the skills, talent and interest to research and prepare appropriate packages of visual, audio and print material. And interviewers to capture more memories and contributions from remaining Star Trek creators.
Perhaps this is the discussion that should be happening as Star Trek approaches its 40th anniversary. For it’s clear that whatever Star Trek becomes in the future, its past is becoming a closed book.
This proposal I believe is in the spirit of Michael Piller. He is one of the Star Trek creators in whose memory this could be done. Star Trek has an important legacy, and it can be kept alive.
Legacy (Part II)
In his commentaries and interviews, Michael Piller talked often of what he learned from Gene Roddenberry, in his first year as a writer and producer for The Next Generation, and Roddenberry’s last year as an active executive producer.
Piller said that in particular his goal in writing the script for Star Trek: Insurrection was to return Star Trek to the Roddenberry approach to the future. He felt he was “the keeper of the flame.”
Of those who came after Roddenberry, Piller often seemed to best understand GR’s Star Trek. Already that Star Trek is being forgotten and dismissed, yet the flame is still alive.
The advent of new “grittier” science fiction series and especially the three alien-threat shows now on the major broadcast networks have generated a lot of “we’re not Star Trek and boy are we glad” chatter.
It’s interesting how many feel they have to say they aren’t Star Trek. But in their attempts to separate themselves from the most successful science fiction saga in history, they wind up protesting too much.
They talk about how times have changed---how this is a more fearful time, people are more threatened, and it’s not an optimistic period as it was in Trek’s heyday. Either these people didn’t live through the Star Trek 1960s, or they did a little too much LDS. In 1966 and 1967 there was a war and a draft killing thousands; there were confrontations between police and students and other demonstrators both frequently and in huge numbers. There were riots in black ghettos each summer from 1964, in a dozen cities. Then they really exploded in 1968.
In 1968, there was more of everything, plus a Nobel Peace Prize winner and moral leader not only of African Americans and their allies but of the world, and the man who was on the way to becoming President, ending the war and reuniting the factions at each other’s throats not only in the streets but in American homes, both gunned down and killed within six weeks of each other.
Star Trek’s revival began as the trauma of Watergate was sinking into the background, but suspicion and cynicism were rising. The threat of nuclear war, of instant Armageddon with little or no warning, was always there, flaring into consciousness in the Cuban Missile crisis and again in the arms buildup of the Reagan (and Next Generation) 1980s. By the late 60s, and through the 70s and 80s, grave environmental threats and prospects of a polluted and ruined world were also known and had become part of everyday consciousness.
The spirit of hope that was expressed in Star Trek lived despite the times, not as some comfortable expression of them. True, there were more visionary and utopian ideas and fervent feeling than is evident today, and perhaps more innocence. There was the Apollo program, and the stunning view of the earth from the moon. But when Edward Kennedy spoke to the Democratic Convention after his brother Robert’s death, as Robert had after President Kennedy’s assassination, he asserted, “the hope still lives, and the dream will never die.” Not everyone believed him.
The truth is that while new shows may very well be creative, well-crafted and a contrast in style, their vision of the future (or of aliens) is less sophisticated than Star Trek’s. It is basically a vision of the past---both the past of science fiction/fantasy, the past of war movies and tales of intrigue, and the past of humankind.
The whole premise of GR’s Star Trek is that we had to outgrow this past if we were going to have an immediate future.
Few understood this better than Michael Piller, especially as he is quoted in his section of The Great Birds of the Galaxy:
“I think Gene’s view of the future serves an important purpose in a very difficult time of our lives and history. When our daily lives are filled with smog, gangs and drugs, it’s important to see that there is hope, that there are ways to solve our problems, that there is a future we can look forward to.”
“I’m sure there is a fine, wonderful series to be made out of Blade Runner, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I think it is terribly important on television that you provide an environment that people want to stay in.
“There are those who would violently disagree with me, but I would love to live in the 24th century that Gene Roddenberry has created. I also think it’s terribly important that family values on television come through, and that [our characters] represent the working environment, the family environment and living environment that we wish we would have. In a way it sets a role model for things we can accomplish.
“ I endorse it, I enjoy writing it, writers who have a difficult time with it complain that it’s hard to find conflict in characters who are perfect, who live in a perfect world. All I can say is that it is harder in that you can’t just drop back and say, ‘Okay, let’s do a drug story this week,’ but these are different people from different places. They approach problems in different ways.”
“We’re dealing with better humans here. We’ve evolved a little bit over the centuries, and so you’re not going to have a lot of pettiness. But I do think there’s room for genuine, honest conflict. For two people who like each other, who come from legitimate backgrounds and are honorable people, you still can have conflict.
“ There is room for conflict and there are ways to find it. It’s a little harder, but I also think it’s very important that we endorse this. It’s certainly the life I want to have.”
In his commentaries and interviews, Michael Piller talked often of what he learned from Gene Roddenberry, in his first year as a writer and producer for The Next Generation, and Roddenberry’s last year as an active executive producer.
Piller said that in particular his goal in writing the script for Star Trek: Insurrection was to return Star Trek to the Roddenberry approach to the future. He felt he was “the keeper of the flame.”
Of those who came after Roddenberry, Piller often seemed to best understand GR’s Star Trek. Already that Star Trek is being forgotten and dismissed, yet the flame is still alive.
The advent of new “grittier” science fiction series and especially the three alien-threat shows now on the major broadcast networks have generated a lot of “we’re not Star Trek and boy are we glad” chatter.
It’s interesting how many feel they have to say they aren’t Star Trek. But in their attempts to separate themselves from the most successful science fiction saga in history, they wind up protesting too much.
They talk about how times have changed---how this is a more fearful time, people are more threatened, and it’s not an optimistic period as it was in Trek’s heyday. Either these people didn’t live through the Star Trek 1960s, or they did a little too much LDS. In 1966 and 1967 there was a war and a draft killing thousands; there were confrontations between police and students and other demonstrators both frequently and in huge numbers. There were riots in black ghettos each summer from 1964, in a dozen cities. Then they really exploded in 1968.
In 1968, there was more of everything, plus a Nobel Peace Prize winner and moral leader not only of African Americans and their allies but of the world, and the man who was on the way to becoming President, ending the war and reuniting the factions at each other’s throats not only in the streets but in American homes, both gunned down and killed within six weeks of each other.
Star Trek’s revival began as the trauma of Watergate was sinking into the background, but suspicion and cynicism were rising. The threat of nuclear war, of instant Armageddon with little or no warning, was always there, flaring into consciousness in the Cuban Missile crisis and again in the arms buildup of the Reagan (and Next Generation) 1980s. By the late 60s, and through the 70s and 80s, grave environmental threats and prospects of a polluted and ruined world were also known and had become part of everyday consciousness.
The spirit of hope that was expressed in Star Trek lived despite the times, not as some comfortable expression of them. True, there were more visionary and utopian ideas and fervent feeling than is evident today, and perhaps more innocence. There was the Apollo program, and the stunning view of the earth from the moon. But when Edward Kennedy spoke to the Democratic Convention after his brother Robert’s death, as Robert had after President Kennedy’s assassination, he asserted, “the hope still lives, and the dream will never die.” Not everyone believed him.
The truth is that while new shows may very well be creative, well-crafted and a contrast in style, their vision of the future (or of aliens) is less sophisticated than Star Trek’s. It is basically a vision of the past---both the past of science fiction/fantasy, the past of war movies and tales of intrigue, and the past of humankind.
The whole premise of GR’s Star Trek is that we had to outgrow this past if we were going to have an immediate future.
Few understood this better than Michael Piller, especially as he is quoted in his section of The Great Birds of the Galaxy:
“I think Gene’s view of the future serves an important purpose in a very difficult time of our lives and history. When our daily lives are filled with smog, gangs and drugs, it’s important to see that there is hope, that there are ways to solve our problems, that there is a future we can look forward to.”
“I’m sure there is a fine, wonderful series to be made out of Blade Runner, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I think it is terribly important on television that you provide an environment that people want to stay in.
“There are those who would violently disagree with me, but I would love to live in the 24th century that Gene Roddenberry has created. I also think it’s terribly important that family values on television come through, and that [our characters] represent the working environment, the family environment and living environment that we wish we would have. In a way it sets a role model for things we can accomplish.
“ I endorse it, I enjoy writing it, writers who have a difficult time with it complain that it’s hard to find conflict in characters who are perfect, who live in a perfect world. All I can say is that it is harder in that you can’t just drop back and say, ‘Okay, let’s do a drug story this week,’ but these are different people from different places. They approach problems in different ways.”
“We’re dealing with better humans here. We’ve evolved a little bit over the centuries, and so you’re not going to have a lot of pettiness. But I do think there’s room for genuine, honest conflict. For two people who like each other, who come from legitimate backgrounds and are honorable people, you still can have conflict.
“ There is room for conflict and there are ways to find it. It’s a little harder, but I also think it’s very important that we endorse this. It’s certainly the life I want to have.”
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Star Trek: The Inner Ape and The Enemy Within
by William S. Kowinski
“The Enemy Within” is one of the foundation episodes of Star Trek. It premiered early in the first season of the original series, the fifth to be broadcast. It’s the “two Kirks” episode, the good Kirk and the bad Kirk split off from each other. Its treatment of human nature, of accommodating the dark side rather than denying it, has become integral to the Star Trek definition of what it means to be human.
The insights of this episode were given a new twist recently by a thesis contained in Our Inner Ape, a recent book by primatologist Frans de Waal. He contends that we actually have two inner apes---the heritage of two ape species with very different ways of dealing with the world.
The story and script for “The Enemy Within” were created by Richard Matheson, already an important science fiction and fantasy author, and a consummate professional as a movie and television episode scriptwriter. In 1966 he was probably best known as the author of the novel and screenplay for one of the better “radiation mutation” science fiction films of the 1950s, “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” directed by Jack Arnold, among the most imaginative and literate filmmakers of the period working in s/f and fantasy.
In addition to his scripts for genre series television, Matheson wrote the classic “Duel” for Steven Spielberg, and adapted “The Martian Chronicles” as a miniseries (prompting author Ray Bradbury to call him “one of the most important authors of the 20th century.”) He wrote the book and script for the 1998 movie, “What Dreams May Come,” and the script for “The Omega Man,” the second film adaptation of his novel, I Am Legend. He’s done the third adaptation of it for a movie scheduled for next year, currently with the novel’s title.
So let’s review the episode. This isn’t the “Mirror, Mirror” mirror universe bad Kirk/good Kirk, where the underlying theme was choice between two paths of conduct (as it was in Star Trek Nemesis, when Captain Picard confronts his clone.) In “The Enemy Within,” a transporter malfunction splits the Captain into two Kirks: a good one (intelligent, compassionate and brave and a very bad one (violent, all appetite and action, and obsessed with survival.)
Shatner plays the bad Kirk as an animal, crouching like an ape, delighted with sensory life. As soon as he gets off the transporter pad he runs his hands over the surfaces of the controls. He’s ecstatic to feel, and he wants more. He is governed by his appetites—heading for Dr. McCoy’s brandy, and then he sexually assaults Yeoman Rand before punching out a young male technician to make his escape.
The good Kirk is puzzled, he is drawn to stillness and contemplation. He can barely understand the evil propelling his double. When they meet, he advances with the certainty of reason. His evil twin cowers, then strikes out. Only Spock’s Vulcan neck pinch prevents him from killing the good Kirk with a phaser blast. (Nimoy invented the neck pinch in this episode, enlisting Shatner to demonstrate it to director Leo Penn, who used some imaginative shots to set the mood for this story. The script called for Spock to knock out the bad Kirk with the butt of his phaser. Nimoy felt Spock would find a more elegant way to disable an enemy.)
by William S. Kowinski
“The Enemy Within” is one of the foundation episodes of Star Trek. It premiered early in the first season of the original series, the fifth to be broadcast. It’s the “two Kirks” episode, the good Kirk and the bad Kirk split off from each other. Its treatment of human nature, of accommodating the dark side rather than denying it, has become integral to the Star Trek definition of what it means to be human.
The insights of this episode were given a new twist recently by a thesis contained in Our Inner Ape, a recent book by primatologist Frans de Waal. He contends that we actually have two inner apes---the heritage of two ape species with very different ways of dealing with the world.
The story and script for “The Enemy Within” were created by Richard Matheson, already an important science fiction and fantasy author, and a consummate professional as a movie and television episode scriptwriter. In 1966 he was probably best known as the author of the novel and screenplay for one of the better “radiation mutation” science fiction films of the 1950s, “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” directed by Jack Arnold, among the most imaginative and literate filmmakers of the period working in s/f and fantasy.
In addition to his scripts for genre series television, Matheson wrote the classic “Duel” for Steven Spielberg, and adapted “The Martian Chronicles” as a miniseries (prompting author Ray Bradbury to call him “one of the most important authors of the 20th century.”) He wrote the book and script for the 1998 movie, “What Dreams May Come,” and the script for “The Omega Man,” the second film adaptation of his novel, I Am Legend. He’s done the third adaptation of it for a movie scheduled for next year, currently with the novel’s title.
So let’s review the episode. This isn’t the “Mirror, Mirror” mirror universe bad Kirk/good Kirk, where the underlying theme was choice between two paths of conduct (as it was in Star Trek Nemesis, when Captain Picard confronts his clone.) In “The Enemy Within,” a transporter malfunction splits the Captain into two Kirks: a good one (intelligent, compassionate and brave and a very bad one (violent, all appetite and action, and obsessed with survival.)
Shatner plays the bad Kirk as an animal, crouching like an ape, delighted with sensory life. As soon as he gets off the transporter pad he runs his hands over the surfaces of the controls. He’s ecstatic to feel, and he wants more. He is governed by his appetites—heading for Dr. McCoy’s brandy, and then he sexually assaults Yeoman Rand before punching out a young male technician to make his escape.
The good Kirk is puzzled, he is drawn to stillness and contemplation. He can barely understand the evil propelling his double. When they meet, he advances with the certainty of reason. His evil twin cowers, then strikes out. Only Spock’s Vulcan neck pinch prevents him from killing the good Kirk with a phaser blast. (Nimoy invented the neck pinch in this episode, enlisting Shatner to demonstrate it to director Leo Penn, who used some imaginative shots to set the mood for this story. The script called for Spock to knock out the bad Kirk with the butt of his phaser. Nimoy felt Spock would find a more elegant way to disable an enemy.)
Good Plus Evil
The simplistic idea of drama focuses on conflict, and the simplest as well as most comforting conflict is between the good guys and the bad guys, the good Force and the Dark Side. That all humans have both good and evil within them is often a theme or a subtext in more sophisticated dramatic storytelling. Critic Stephen Schiff sees it as the essential quality of Film Noir, for example. “No movie can rightly call itself noir unless it locates the nexus of weakness and evil in hero and villain alike,” he writes, “unless it convinces us that we are all capable of terrible deeds, that the fiend is merely the good guy turned inside out.”
If you’ve seen the new Sherlock Holmes TV movie, “ The Case of The Silk Stocking” (broadcast in the U.S. recently on PBS) Rupert Everett as Holmes has this noir flavor.
But this Star Trek episode extends the idea beyond this relationship of opposites. It begins to define how they relate, and how they need each other. As he observes the good Kirk becoming more indecisive, Spock proposes a theory with a barely controlled aggressiveness: Kirk is losing his force of will because his power of decision comes from his negative half.
Spock defines the bifurcation: “His negative side, which you call hostility, lust, violence, and his positive side, which earth people describe as compassion, love, tenderness.” Then he asks, “What is it makes one man an exceptional leader? We see indications that it is his negative side that makes him strong---that his evil side, if you will, properly controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength.”
This is the apparently dispassionate analysis of the logical Vulcan. But he finishes with a cryptic comment that ends with a double meaning. “If I seem to be insensitive to what you’re going through,” Spock says to the good Kirk, “understand, it’s the way I am.”
Kirk faces losing his command unless his two sides can be reintegrated. Yet it sickens his good side to accept this. Later when he is alone with Dr. McCoy, he expresses it. “I have to take him back inside myself, I can’t survive without him. I don’t want to take him back! He’s a thoughtless, brutal animal! Yet it’s me! Me!”
Bones has brought them each a glass of brandy. “Jim, you’re no different than anyone else. We all have our darker side. We need it. It’s half of what we are. It’s not really ugly—it’s human. Yes, human. A lot of what he is makes you the man you are” McCoy is forced to agree with Spock, “Your strength of command lies mostly in him.”
“What do I have?” the good Kirk asks. “You have the goodness…” “Not enough!” “The intelligence, the logic---it appears your half has most of those, and perhaps that’s where man’s essential courage comes from. For, you see, he was afraid. You weren’t.”
This is another unusual and intriguing idea. We often think of courage as being physical, as “animal courage.” But McCoy suggests it is a product of consciousness.
Spock picks up this theme when he insists that the good Kirk must take the bad Kirk through the transporter, despite the risk that both may die. They learned of the splitting phenomenon when an animal beamed up from the surface also had a second, snarling self. When they tried to reintegrate them, the single animal returned dead. Spock insists the animal died of shock, frightened by the reintegration it couldn’t understand. “You have your intelligence controlling your fear.”
After McCoy insists this is only a theory, Spock pays off his earlier comment. When he said, “this is the way I am,” he meant his life dealing with two halves is "the way I am." “Being split in two is no theory with me, Doctor. I have a human half as well as an alien half, submerged, constantly at war with each other...I survive it because my intelligence wins out over both, makes them live together.”
The good Kirk takes the chance, and the transporter magic reintegrates the two halves into the single decisive but good captain, who saves Sulu and the other men who have been freezing to death on the planet below while all this was happening aboard the Enterprise.
The simplistic idea of drama focuses on conflict, and the simplest as well as most comforting conflict is between the good guys and the bad guys, the good Force and the Dark Side. That all humans have both good and evil within them is often a theme or a subtext in more sophisticated dramatic storytelling. Critic Stephen Schiff sees it as the essential quality of Film Noir, for example. “No movie can rightly call itself noir unless it locates the nexus of weakness and evil in hero and villain alike,” he writes, “unless it convinces us that we are all capable of terrible deeds, that the fiend is merely the good guy turned inside out.”
If you’ve seen the new Sherlock Holmes TV movie, “ The Case of The Silk Stocking” (broadcast in the U.S. recently on PBS) Rupert Everett as Holmes has this noir flavor.
But this Star Trek episode extends the idea beyond this relationship of opposites. It begins to define how they relate, and how they need each other. As he observes the good Kirk becoming more indecisive, Spock proposes a theory with a barely controlled aggressiveness: Kirk is losing his force of will because his power of decision comes from his negative half.
Spock defines the bifurcation: “His negative side, which you call hostility, lust, violence, and his positive side, which earth people describe as compassion, love, tenderness.” Then he asks, “What is it makes one man an exceptional leader? We see indications that it is his negative side that makes him strong---that his evil side, if you will, properly controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength.”
This is the apparently dispassionate analysis of the logical Vulcan. But he finishes with a cryptic comment that ends with a double meaning. “If I seem to be insensitive to what you’re going through,” Spock says to the good Kirk, “understand, it’s the way I am.”
Kirk faces losing his command unless his two sides can be reintegrated. Yet it sickens his good side to accept this. Later when he is alone with Dr. McCoy, he expresses it. “I have to take him back inside myself, I can’t survive without him. I don’t want to take him back! He’s a thoughtless, brutal animal! Yet it’s me! Me!”
Bones has brought them each a glass of brandy. “Jim, you’re no different than anyone else. We all have our darker side. We need it. It’s half of what we are. It’s not really ugly—it’s human. Yes, human. A lot of what he is makes you the man you are” McCoy is forced to agree with Spock, “Your strength of command lies mostly in him.”
“What do I have?” the good Kirk asks. “You have the goodness…” “Not enough!” “The intelligence, the logic---it appears your half has most of those, and perhaps that’s where man’s essential courage comes from. For, you see, he was afraid. You weren’t.”
This is another unusual and intriguing idea. We often think of courage as being physical, as “animal courage.” But McCoy suggests it is a product of consciousness.
Spock picks up this theme when he insists that the good Kirk must take the bad Kirk through the transporter, despite the risk that both may die. They learned of the splitting phenomenon when an animal beamed up from the surface also had a second, snarling self. When they tried to reintegrate them, the single animal returned dead. Spock insists the animal died of shock, frightened by the reintegration it couldn’t understand. “You have your intelligence controlling your fear.”
After McCoy insists this is only a theory, Spock pays off his earlier comment. When he said, “this is the way I am,” he meant his life dealing with two halves is "the way I am." “Being split in two is no theory with me, Doctor. I have a human half as well as an alien half, submerged, constantly at war with each other...I survive it because my intelligence wins out over both, makes them live together.”
The good Kirk takes the chance, and the transporter magic reintegrates the two halves into the single decisive but good captain, who saves Sulu and the other men who have been freezing to death on the planet below while all this was happening aboard the Enterprise.
The Thin Thread
One of the aspects of science fiction, and especially original series Star Trek, that makes its allegories so vivid is their innocence. The human encounter with strange new worlds is often an innocent encounter with a perennial human dilemma. In this case, our 23rd century spacefarers are reinventing insights of the early 20th century psychologists, particularly Carl Jung. (By the 24th century, Counselor Troi will have caught up on that reading.)
Jung adopted Freud’s theory of the relationship between the human consciousness and the human unconscious, though he modified it and made it a good deal richer. Jung’s idea of the unconscious included primitive ideas and feelings inherited from our animal natures, but a lot more than that.
Specifically he posited something he called the shadow, a part of the unconscious where the unwanted and unapproved parts of ourselves reside. They are usually what we’d call evil, but can also be good qualities that our society forces us to repress, like the impulse to give away all your money to a homeless person who somehow touches your heart at that moment.
As in this Star Trek episode, Jung suggests that our shadows are not only part of us, but necessary parts of us. (A good explanation of Jung’s ideas of the shadow, as well as suggestions for integrating it into our lives, is Robert A. Johnson’s short book --just over a hundred pages-- called Owning Your Own Shadow.)
What Spock and McCoy call “intelligence” in this episode, Jung calls “consciousness.” The human struggle is to integrate as much of the unconsciousness into consciousness as possible, while allowing the unconscious its integrity, and respecting its power. Many of the tools of consciousness Jung talked about—the concepts of projection, denial, and transference---are ways by which the individual monitors the often deceptive workings of the unconsciousness.
For Jung, this process is not just important to each individual---to understand the forces and workings of the unconscious is vital to our survival as societies and perhaps as a species. He was especially insistent about this in the 1950s, in the early atomic age. “The world hangs on a thin thread,” he said in a video interview. “That thread is the human psyche… We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger.” But we know nothing about it, he added. Nobody gives credit to the idea that the psychic processes of the ordinary human have any importance. But, Jung maintained, the future of mankind depends very much on ordinary humans recognizing the shadow in themselves and in their societies.
Respecting the power of the unconscious and honoring its contribution while conscientiously applying consciousness and intelligence to guide behavior are central to Jung’s psychology and to this Star Trek episode. But recently a new perspective on these matters comes from another discipline---the study of fellow primates in the wild.
One of the aspects of science fiction, and especially original series Star Trek, that makes its allegories so vivid is their innocence. The human encounter with strange new worlds is often an innocent encounter with a perennial human dilemma. In this case, our 23rd century spacefarers are reinventing insights of the early 20th century psychologists, particularly Carl Jung. (By the 24th century, Counselor Troi will have caught up on that reading.)
Jung adopted Freud’s theory of the relationship between the human consciousness and the human unconscious, though he modified it and made it a good deal richer. Jung’s idea of the unconscious included primitive ideas and feelings inherited from our animal natures, but a lot more than that.
Specifically he posited something he called the shadow, a part of the unconscious where the unwanted and unapproved parts of ourselves reside. They are usually what we’d call evil, but can also be good qualities that our society forces us to repress, like the impulse to give away all your money to a homeless person who somehow touches your heart at that moment.
As in this Star Trek episode, Jung suggests that our shadows are not only part of us, but necessary parts of us. (A good explanation of Jung’s ideas of the shadow, as well as suggestions for integrating it into our lives, is Robert A. Johnson’s short book --just over a hundred pages-- called Owning Your Own Shadow.)
What Spock and McCoy call “intelligence” in this episode, Jung calls “consciousness.” The human struggle is to integrate as much of the unconsciousness into consciousness as possible, while allowing the unconscious its integrity, and respecting its power. Many of the tools of consciousness Jung talked about—the concepts of projection, denial, and transference---are ways by which the individual monitors the often deceptive workings of the unconsciousness.
For Jung, this process is not just important to each individual---to understand the forces and workings of the unconscious is vital to our survival as societies and perhaps as a species. He was especially insistent about this in the 1950s, in the early atomic age. “The world hangs on a thin thread,” he said in a video interview. “That thread is the human psyche… We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger.” But we know nothing about it, he added. Nobody gives credit to the idea that the psychic processes of the ordinary human have any importance. But, Jung maintained, the future of mankind depends very much on ordinary humans recognizing the shadow in themselves and in their societies.
Respecting the power of the unconscious and honoring its contribution while conscientiously applying consciousness and intelligence to guide behavior are central to Jung’s psychology and to this Star Trek episode. But recently a new perspective on these matters comes from another discipline---the study of fellow primates in the wild.
The Animal Within
I’ve only seen Temple Grandin’s New York Times review of The Inner Ape and some online description by the author, although I have read some of Frans de Waal’s other work. De Waal is one of those who have been studying primate and other animal behavior without the limiting prejudices of earlier science. Scientists need a theory to guide them, but they can be so entranced by that theory that their observations are incomplete or inaccurate. For example, it was an axiom that humans are the only species to use tools, and so for generations scientists missed the evidence in front of their noses of many other species using tools.
They also became captivated by a particular interpretation of Darwinian evolution and the individual organism’s struggle for survival, later even more restricted to the single-minded behavior of the “selfish gene.” They devalued the role that the group plays in the lives of social species, such as primates.
So they missed obvious if somewhat subtle kinds of behavior that ran counter to their theories, especially of struggle. They missed, in particular, examples of altruism, empathy and conciliatory behavior, and important rituals of conflict avoidance and resolution. These turn out to be very important for animals whose health, mental and emotional stability, and survival depends on being an individual with roles and relationships in the group.
De Waal and others wrote about this in a volume De Waal co-edited called Natural Conflict Resolution. In The Inner Ape, he writes specifically about two ape species, the familiar chimpanzees and a species studied only recently, the bonobos.
In the wild, chimp society is a male-dominated hierarchy. They hunt for meat and will kill members of rival chimp bands, even chimps they’ve known for a long time, if they become members of another group. Male chimps sometimes kill infants sired by other males.
This was the template for most ideas about primates, and therefore about “primitive” humans and basic human nature before the social controls of civilization and reason. But that’s partly because nobody knew much about the bonobos.
The bonobos are nearly opposite to chimp society: matrilineal and peace-loving, they make love, not war. They are also skilled at conciliation and have been known to exhibit compassion, even for other species (a bonobo in a zoo was seen tending to an injured starling.) Within their species, they take care of frail elders rather than let them die or kill them when they can’t keep up.
The old model of human nature attributes our violence and extreme passions to our instincts and animal natures, while our conciliatory or altruistic behavior or even self-controlled behavior to the education and moral instruction---and the police controls--- of manmade institutions.
But De Waal’s two species shows that both sides of human behavior are part of our natural heritage. We are as close genetically to the bonobos as we are to the chimpanzees.
De Waal’s research also suggests, as does Jung and “The Enemy Within,” that both lines of this heritage are useful if not crucial to us. When Berlin was bombed in World War II, all the gentle bonobos in the zoo died of heart failure. All the chimps survived.
There is another aspect to de Waal’s research that bears on the Star Trek view of human nature. While we have both sides within us, we all have a natural ability to learn a better way. He writes of an experiment involving two species of monkeys, the aggressive rhesus and the gentler stumptails. Young rhesus monkeys raised in stumptail society picked up their more peaceful ways of settling disputes. They continued to use these skills even when returned to rhesus society.
It’s important to add that chimps, like many other species, also have a gentler side. Much of their group activity is grooming each other, playing and learning from each other. Since chimps have been trainable and even domesticated to a degree, they aren’t only violent.
The message of "The Enemy Within" is the same as the message of Jungian psychology: our dark side is essential to who we are. The message of de Waal’s book is that our nature is not only dark, but also consists of natural goodness, compassion, and a kind of moral responsibility.
What all three have in common is the message of choice. De Waal’s book suggests that if chimps can be taught a different way of dealing with conflict, so can we. As conscious beings, we have the power of decision. Once we accept our darker side---the shadow, the great unknown of the unconscious--- and the power it has over us, then we can choose. It’s not always easy, and it’s not successful every time, but we can keep at it.
Kirk recognizes this in another original series episode when he concedes that “we are killers---but we aren’t going to kill…today.” He is more explicit about the dynamic at the end of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, when he talks about what V’ger took from the merging of machine and human it so desperately wanted and needed: "I think we gave it the ability to create its own sense of purpose," Kirk says, "out of our own human weaknesses, and the drive that compels us to overcome them."
It's also important for us to remember our dual natures when we feel compelled to divide the world into the virtuous and the evildoers. Apart from the human habit of projecting elements of ourselves we are ashamed or afraid of and attributing them to the Other, the alien, the enemy without, we must recognize that we all share the potential for evil and for good. Star Trek carried this approach forward in various ways--for example, by giving aliens their reasons for doing what they were doing, or feelings and reactions we can recognize in ourselves.
Yes, there are evil acts, and everyone has a right to defend themselves against violence and subjugation. But only those who stand to gain from violence will refuse to look for underlying causes that might be addressed. The great breakthrough in U.S. Soviet relations arguably occurred when President Kennedy recognized the similiarities, and that "we are all mortal."
We don't have to apologize for the negative side of ourselves, because even it has positive effects: our appetites are part of our drive to survive, and our aggressive energy is part of our ability and momentum to strive, explore, solve problems, to focus our intuitions and knowledge to make decisions, to experiment, and even to shake things up with pranks and audacity. It also helps us marshal our physical energies for a purpose.
Yet recognizing the capacity for evil in ourselves is also a step towards compassion, just as recognizing the good in ourselves is a step towards honoring that compassion.
I’ve only seen Temple Grandin’s New York Times review of The Inner Ape and some online description by the author, although I have read some of Frans de Waal’s other work. De Waal is one of those who have been studying primate and other animal behavior without the limiting prejudices of earlier science. Scientists need a theory to guide them, but they can be so entranced by that theory that their observations are incomplete or inaccurate. For example, it was an axiom that humans are the only species to use tools, and so for generations scientists missed the evidence in front of their noses of many other species using tools.
They also became captivated by a particular interpretation of Darwinian evolution and the individual organism’s struggle for survival, later even more restricted to the single-minded behavior of the “selfish gene.” They devalued the role that the group plays in the lives of social species, such as primates.
So they missed obvious if somewhat subtle kinds of behavior that ran counter to their theories, especially of struggle. They missed, in particular, examples of altruism, empathy and conciliatory behavior, and important rituals of conflict avoidance and resolution. These turn out to be very important for animals whose health, mental and emotional stability, and survival depends on being an individual with roles and relationships in the group.
De Waal and others wrote about this in a volume De Waal co-edited called Natural Conflict Resolution. In The Inner Ape, he writes specifically about two ape species, the familiar chimpanzees and a species studied only recently, the bonobos.
In the wild, chimp society is a male-dominated hierarchy. They hunt for meat and will kill members of rival chimp bands, even chimps they’ve known for a long time, if they become members of another group. Male chimps sometimes kill infants sired by other males.
This was the template for most ideas about primates, and therefore about “primitive” humans and basic human nature before the social controls of civilization and reason. But that’s partly because nobody knew much about the bonobos.
The bonobos are nearly opposite to chimp society: matrilineal and peace-loving, they make love, not war. They are also skilled at conciliation and have been known to exhibit compassion, even for other species (a bonobo in a zoo was seen tending to an injured starling.) Within their species, they take care of frail elders rather than let them die or kill them when they can’t keep up.
The old model of human nature attributes our violence and extreme passions to our instincts and animal natures, while our conciliatory or altruistic behavior or even self-controlled behavior to the education and moral instruction---and the police controls--- of manmade institutions.
But De Waal’s two species shows that both sides of human behavior are part of our natural heritage. We are as close genetically to the bonobos as we are to the chimpanzees.
De Waal’s research also suggests, as does Jung and “The Enemy Within,” that both lines of this heritage are useful if not crucial to us. When Berlin was bombed in World War II, all the gentle bonobos in the zoo died of heart failure. All the chimps survived.
There is another aspect to de Waal’s research that bears on the Star Trek view of human nature. While we have both sides within us, we all have a natural ability to learn a better way. He writes of an experiment involving two species of monkeys, the aggressive rhesus and the gentler stumptails. Young rhesus monkeys raised in stumptail society picked up their more peaceful ways of settling disputes. They continued to use these skills even when returned to rhesus society.
It’s important to add that chimps, like many other species, also have a gentler side. Much of their group activity is grooming each other, playing and learning from each other. Since chimps have been trainable and even domesticated to a degree, they aren’t only violent.
The message of "The Enemy Within" is the same as the message of Jungian psychology: our dark side is essential to who we are. The message of de Waal’s book is that our nature is not only dark, but also consists of natural goodness, compassion, and a kind of moral responsibility.
What all three have in common is the message of choice. De Waal’s book suggests that if chimps can be taught a different way of dealing with conflict, so can we. As conscious beings, we have the power of decision. Once we accept our darker side---the shadow, the great unknown of the unconscious--- and the power it has over us, then we can choose. It’s not always easy, and it’s not successful every time, but we can keep at it.
Kirk recognizes this in another original series episode when he concedes that “we are killers---but we aren’t going to kill…today.” He is more explicit about the dynamic at the end of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, when he talks about what V’ger took from the merging of machine and human it so desperately wanted and needed: "I think we gave it the ability to create its own sense of purpose," Kirk says, "out of our own human weaknesses, and the drive that compels us to overcome them."
It's also important for us to remember our dual natures when we feel compelled to divide the world into the virtuous and the evildoers. Apart from the human habit of projecting elements of ourselves we are ashamed or afraid of and attributing them to the Other, the alien, the enemy without, we must recognize that we all share the potential for evil and for good. Star Trek carried this approach forward in various ways--for example, by giving aliens their reasons for doing what they were doing, or feelings and reactions we can recognize in ourselves.
Yes, there are evil acts, and everyone has a right to defend themselves against violence and subjugation. But only those who stand to gain from violence will refuse to look for underlying causes that might be addressed. The great breakthrough in U.S. Soviet relations arguably occurred when President Kennedy recognized the similiarities, and that "we are all mortal."
We don't have to apologize for the negative side of ourselves, because even it has positive effects: our appetites are part of our drive to survive, and our aggressive energy is part of our ability and momentum to strive, explore, solve problems, to focus our intuitions and knowledge to make decisions, to experiment, and even to shake things up with pranks and audacity. It also helps us marshal our physical energies for a purpose.
Yet recognizing the capacity for evil in ourselves is also a step towards compassion, just as recognizing the good in ourselves is a step towards honoring that compassion.
Monday, October 17, 2005
John de Lancie Gets A Hand (A Qticle)
A Qticle, get it? What’s wrong---too Qte?
Okay, let’s get serious. John de Lancie appeared on stage in the L.A. Theatre Works production of The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial for the first time, to a capacity crowd here in Arcata, CA. He played legendary attorney Clarence Darrow, who defended John Scopes in the famous 1925 trial concerning the teaching of evolution in schools. His antagonist was the acclaimed orator and presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, played by Edward Asner.
L.A. Theatre Works produces plays for audio: for live radio in its “The Play’s the Thing” series, and other productions for schools and libraries, all available on tapes and CDs. These productions range from audio versions of contemporary and classic plays to adaptations of famous novels (including its first production, a 14-hour version of the Sinclair Lewis novel, Babbitt) and docudramas. The very impressive catalog of its offerings can be found at its website.
Not only is this a tremendous cultural resource, but the audio format makes it easier for hard-to-schedule Hollywood actors to do great parts. They get to play characters other than cops and criminals, and we get to hear familiar voices interpreting the best drama and literature, and dramatizing the great issues of our time.
Star Trek actors are among them: Rene Auberjonis is heard in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Armin Shimerman in Twelve Angry Men, Paul Winfield in Ruby McCollum, Alice Krige in Ronald Harwood's Another Time, and Gates McFadden in Neil Simon’s Chapter Two. Gates is also in the almost all-Star Trek production of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, along with Leonard Nimoy, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, Dwight Schultz and Armin Shimerman.
John de Lancie, who co-founded “Alien Voices” with Leonard Nimoy, and acted, wrote and directed several of its audio productions based on classic science fiction stories (including several others by Wells) is also heard in several Theatre Works plays.
I first saw de Lancie's impressively tall form and calm but focused gaze in one of the corridors outside the studio theatre on the Humboldt State University campus, where some members of the traveling company were assembling for an informal workshop with theatre students on the afternoon before their first performance. He was signing a hardback copy of a Q novel for a teenage boy accompanied by his father. It turned out to be more than a fan---he was a local resident named Bo Banduci who would be performing in the play itself. But he certainly was a fan, judging from the big smile he wore as he left.
A Qticle, get it? What’s wrong---too Qte?
Okay, let’s get serious. John de Lancie appeared on stage in the L.A. Theatre Works production of The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial for the first time, to a capacity crowd here in Arcata, CA. He played legendary attorney Clarence Darrow, who defended John Scopes in the famous 1925 trial concerning the teaching of evolution in schools. His antagonist was the acclaimed orator and presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, played by Edward Asner.
L.A. Theatre Works produces plays for audio: for live radio in its “The Play’s the Thing” series, and other productions for schools and libraries, all available on tapes and CDs. These productions range from audio versions of contemporary and classic plays to adaptations of famous novels (including its first production, a 14-hour version of the Sinclair Lewis novel, Babbitt) and docudramas. The very impressive catalog of its offerings can be found at its website.
Not only is this a tremendous cultural resource, but the audio format makes it easier for hard-to-schedule Hollywood actors to do great parts. They get to play characters other than cops and criminals, and we get to hear familiar voices interpreting the best drama and literature, and dramatizing the great issues of our time.
Star Trek actors are among them: Rene Auberjonis is heard in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Armin Shimerman in Twelve Angry Men, Paul Winfield in Ruby McCollum, Alice Krige in Ronald Harwood's Another Time, and Gates McFadden in Neil Simon’s Chapter Two. Gates is also in the almost all-Star Trek production of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, along with Leonard Nimoy, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, Dwight Schultz and Armin Shimerman.
John de Lancie, who co-founded “Alien Voices” with Leonard Nimoy, and acted, wrote and directed several of its audio productions based on classic science fiction stories (including several others by Wells) is also heard in several Theatre Works plays.
I first saw de Lancie's impressively tall form and calm but focused gaze in one of the corridors outside the studio theatre on the Humboldt State University campus, where some members of the traveling company were assembling for an informal workshop with theatre students on the afternoon before their first performance. He was signing a hardback copy of a Q novel for a teenage boy accompanied by his father. It turned out to be more than a fan---he was a local resident named Bo Banduci who would be performing in the play itself. But he certainly was a fan, judging from the big smile he wore as he left.
De Lancie didn’t actually take part in the workshop (he looked in occasionally, but mostly prowled the corridors with his cell phone.) But those who did---including director Gordon Hunt, narrator Alley Mills (a classically trained actor and currently a volunteer caseworker for disaster relief at the American Red Cross, best known as Norma Arnold on The Wonder Years)—explained how this particular production came about.
Because the L.A. Theatre Works does some of its radio plays before a live audience, there was interest in touring such a production, so people could see what a radio play looked like. They discovered that their most requested recording from high school teachers throughout the nation was “The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial,” written by Peter Goodchild using the actual Scopes Trial transcripts. So, on the 80th anniversary of the original trial, an 18-week tour of 23 locales was organized, which will take this production to Nashville, Omaha and Fayetteville, Arkansas as well as Los Angeles and suburban Washington.
Some actors would come and go, so some audiences would be seeing Marsha Mason, Mike Farrell and—replacing John de Lancie as Darrow, James Cromwell: Zephran Cochrane for Q.
It would also be seen on the Penn State campus at University Park, just a few hours up the highway from Dover, PA, where another trial involving the teaching of evolution in schools was going on as we gathered to discuss this production.
The assembled participants stressed that the production was not one-sided. Certainly the teaching of science, and keeping religious views separate from science education, was the core issue. But they talked about the principles and the fears that Bryan represented---the idea that to him and others, Darwinian evolution symbolized the threat of a soulless society, without human values. In some venues, the production would be followed by discussions involving experts and prominent voices in that community.
After the workshop I talked briefly with director Gordon Hunt about actors and voices. He said that with all the emphasis on the visual, younger actors were not getting enough vocal training. Even theatrically trained actors often lack the skills to act with their voices.
This is an often-overlooked element in Star Trek’s success: distinctive and powerful voices, and actors who used them well. It’s part of Star Trek’s debt to theatre and even to radio.
I also talked with actor Kevin Kilner, who hopes to produce a documentary about this tour. We continued our conversation as they all left the studio theatre. Outside, as the vans pulled up to take them away, I noticed John de Lancie and Edward Asner standing together. I knew I had only a few minutes before they left, so I had to make a painful choice: do I talk to Lou Grant (Mondays at 10 will always be sacred because of him) or to Q?
It was you, dear readers, who decided it for me.
Because the L.A. Theatre Works does some of its radio plays before a live audience, there was interest in touring such a production, so people could see what a radio play looked like. They discovered that their most requested recording from high school teachers throughout the nation was “The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial,” written by Peter Goodchild using the actual Scopes Trial transcripts. So, on the 80th anniversary of the original trial, an 18-week tour of 23 locales was organized, which will take this production to Nashville, Omaha and Fayetteville, Arkansas as well as Los Angeles and suburban Washington.
Some actors would come and go, so some audiences would be seeing Marsha Mason, Mike Farrell and—replacing John de Lancie as Darrow, James Cromwell: Zephran Cochrane for Q.
It would also be seen on the Penn State campus at University Park, just a few hours up the highway from Dover, PA, where another trial involving the teaching of evolution in schools was going on as we gathered to discuss this production.
The assembled participants stressed that the production was not one-sided. Certainly the teaching of science, and keeping religious views separate from science education, was the core issue. But they talked about the principles and the fears that Bryan represented---the idea that to him and others, Darwinian evolution symbolized the threat of a soulless society, without human values. In some venues, the production would be followed by discussions involving experts and prominent voices in that community.
After the workshop I talked briefly with director Gordon Hunt about actors and voices. He said that with all the emphasis on the visual, younger actors were not getting enough vocal training. Even theatrically trained actors often lack the skills to act with their voices.
This is an often-overlooked element in Star Trek’s success: distinctive and powerful voices, and actors who used them well. It’s part of Star Trek’s debt to theatre and even to radio.
I also talked with actor Kevin Kilner, who hopes to produce a documentary about this tour. We continued our conversation as they all left the studio theatre. Outside, as the vans pulled up to take them away, I noticed John de Lancie and Edward Asner standing together. I knew I had only a few minutes before they left, so I had to make a painful choice: do I talk to Lou Grant (Mondays at 10 will always be sacred because of him) or to Q?
It was you, dear readers, who decided it for me.
De Lancie said he had no further Q projects in the works—no novel or audio (as the two “Q and Spock” dialogues he did with Leonard Nimoy.) His opinion is that Star Trek is over, at least for the foreseeable future. He is of the “they went to the well too often” school, suggesting that three series done by the same people had perhaps been too much.
In the printed program for that evening’s performance, Star Trek is barely mentioned in de Lancie’s credits, sandwiched between “The Closer” and “Legend” in a list of “numerous television shows.” Instead his film and theatre work, and particularly his performances with symphony orchestras were emphasized. In addition to performing with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Montreal Symphony, he has written and directed ten Symphonic Plays, and a concert series for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is scheduled to direct several operas in Atlanta. He has kept his hand in the science fiction field as well. In addition to Alien Voices, he’s produced television specials for the Sci-Fi Channel.
As for the opening performance itself, it was staged with simplicity and strength, and the script provided vivid historical context. The production was dramatic while still being fair and reasonably faithful to the actual events. The set was comprised of simple tables and chairs on two levels. The actors read from scripts in hand. There was a director onstage who cued sound and light effects. You know, Q de Lancie! (Sorry, couldn’t help it.)
On this particular night, the trial judge was played by another Star Trek actor, Jerry Hardin, who spoke with the same accent he used playing Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain in TNG’s “Time’s Arrow,” although he looked more as he did in TNG’s “”When the Bough Breaks.”
De Lancie’s authoritative Q voice served him well, although Darrow doesn’t have particularly brilliant speeches. His big moment is the cross-examination of Bryan towards the end of the play. (Our local talent, Bo Banduci, did very well as the 14 year old who testified as to what his teacher had said about evolution. Banduci’s strong voice and assured performance matched up very well with de Lancie, who questioned him.)
My strongest impression was that this production revealed the unique strengths of staging a radio drama (or, at least, this particular one), and exposed an area of potential weakness. The strength is in adding the visual dimension to riveting oratory. There were two transcendent examples of this, both in the first act. The first was a speech delivered with consummate skill by Edward Asner. He had captivated the audience immediately, with his theatrical pronunciation of “evil-lution”---no doubt something that the theatrical Bryan would have done. But he didn’t have a real speech until well into the first act, but when he did, it was a dandy.
Then the first act ended with the most powerful oratory of the trial, delivered by neither Bryan nor Darrow, but by Dudley Malone, a defense attorney who had said little to that point. It was delivered in this production with spellbinding intensity and consummate skill by Steppenwolf Theatre Company actor Francis Guinan (any relation? He didn’t look El-Aurian). Bryan himself called it the greatest speech he ever heard.
But after the long first act ended with these verbal fireworks, the shorter second act seemed to lack its energy. Darrow’s cross-examination of Bryan is the dramatic climax of the play and film version of “Inherit the Wind,” (also based on this trial, though with a stronger point of view) which emphasizes Bryan’s increasingly desperate defense of his belief in the more or less literal interpretation of the Bible as scientific fact. But on this night, in this production, it seemed to fall a little flat.
It may have been that de Lancie and Asner didn’t have their timing down yet. Maybe the writing wasn't as sharp, or maybe it was just me---I was tired. But it could also be a problem inherent in the form. Bryan’s breakdown, partly physical (he died a few days later) is more subtle than the oratory. Perhaps those in the first few rows who could see Asner’s face clearly, or hear the nuances in his soft tones, had a different experience. (I’m hoping to catch the radio broadcast of this performance on the campus station to hear this scene again, without trying to see it.) But this may be something that staged radio drama can’t do as well as either radio or fully produced stage or screen drama.
The issues of the Scopes trial and the continuing evolution debate touch upon concerns that are important in Star Trek, though in some sense Star Trek reconciles them: it represents science and soul.
But I suppose my greatest impression in experiencing this production and applying it to Star Trek is my gratitude that for most of its run on television and in film, Star Trek clearly came from this rich, complex, wondrous and profoundly human tradition of theatre and classic movie (and radio) storytelling, and not from video games.
In the printed program for that evening’s performance, Star Trek is barely mentioned in de Lancie’s credits, sandwiched between “The Closer” and “Legend” in a list of “numerous television shows.” Instead his film and theatre work, and particularly his performances with symphony orchestras were emphasized. In addition to performing with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Montreal Symphony, he has written and directed ten Symphonic Plays, and a concert series for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is scheduled to direct several operas in Atlanta. He has kept his hand in the science fiction field as well. In addition to Alien Voices, he’s produced television specials for the Sci-Fi Channel.
As for the opening performance itself, it was staged with simplicity and strength, and the script provided vivid historical context. The production was dramatic while still being fair and reasonably faithful to the actual events. The set was comprised of simple tables and chairs on two levels. The actors read from scripts in hand. There was a director onstage who cued sound and light effects. You know, Q de Lancie! (Sorry, couldn’t help it.)
On this particular night, the trial judge was played by another Star Trek actor, Jerry Hardin, who spoke with the same accent he used playing Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain in TNG’s “Time’s Arrow,” although he looked more as he did in TNG’s “”When the Bough Breaks.”
De Lancie’s authoritative Q voice served him well, although Darrow doesn’t have particularly brilliant speeches. His big moment is the cross-examination of Bryan towards the end of the play. (Our local talent, Bo Banduci, did very well as the 14 year old who testified as to what his teacher had said about evolution. Banduci’s strong voice and assured performance matched up very well with de Lancie, who questioned him.)
My strongest impression was that this production revealed the unique strengths of staging a radio drama (or, at least, this particular one), and exposed an area of potential weakness. The strength is in adding the visual dimension to riveting oratory. There were two transcendent examples of this, both in the first act. The first was a speech delivered with consummate skill by Edward Asner. He had captivated the audience immediately, with his theatrical pronunciation of “evil-lution”---no doubt something that the theatrical Bryan would have done. But he didn’t have a real speech until well into the first act, but when he did, it was a dandy.
Then the first act ended with the most powerful oratory of the trial, delivered by neither Bryan nor Darrow, but by Dudley Malone, a defense attorney who had said little to that point. It was delivered in this production with spellbinding intensity and consummate skill by Steppenwolf Theatre Company actor Francis Guinan (any relation? He didn’t look El-Aurian). Bryan himself called it the greatest speech he ever heard.
But after the long first act ended with these verbal fireworks, the shorter second act seemed to lack its energy. Darrow’s cross-examination of Bryan is the dramatic climax of the play and film version of “Inherit the Wind,” (also based on this trial, though with a stronger point of view) which emphasizes Bryan’s increasingly desperate defense of his belief in the more or less literal interpretation of the Bible as scientific fact. But on this night, in this production, it seemed to fall a little flat.
It may have been that de Lancie and Asner didn’t have their timing down yet. Maybe the writing wasn't as sharp, or maybe it was just me---I was tired. But it could also be a problem inherent in the form. Bryan’s breakdown, partly physical (he died a few days later) is more subtle than the oratory. Perhaps those in the first few rows who could see Asner’s face clearly, or hear the nuances in his soft tones, had a different experience. (I’m hoping to catch the radio broadcast of this performance on the campus station to hear this scene again, without trying to see it.) But this may be something that staged radio drama can’t do as well as either radio or fully produced stage or screen drama.
The issues of the Scopes trial and the continuing evolution debate touch upon concerns that are important in Star Trek, though in some sense Star Trek reconciles them: it represents science and soul.
But I suppose my greatest impression in experiencing this production and applying it to Star Trek is my gratitude that for most of its run on television and in film, Star Trek clearly came from this rich, complex, wondrous and profoundly human tradition of theatre and classic movie (and radio) storytelling, and not from video games.
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